Heavyweight champion Joe Louis dances as German challenger Max Schmeling falls to the canvas in the first and final round of their rematch in New York in 1938. The Pittsburgh Courier helped make him a hero to his own people and a sympathetic champion to the rest of the country. Photograph: AP

Mark Whitaker has written an enticing history of the black culture of mid-20th century Pittsburgh, filled with engaging musicians, athletes, and journalists. Smoketown makes a plausible argument that the cultural achievements of African-Americans in this western Pennsylvania steel town often rivaled those of the much better known Harlem Renaissance in New York City and that the relationships between reporters and sportspeople were at the heart of that.

Whitaker was the first black editor-in-chief of Newsweek and a top executive at NBC News and CNN before becoming a full-time book writer. His resume is undoubtedly one reason that so much of this book focuses on the men and women of the Pittsburgh Courier, which was Americas largest black weekly at the end of the 1930s, with a circulation of nearly 250,000.